“I don’t know,” Soraya said hoarsely. It was the truest answer she could manage.
Parvaneh waited for her to continue, and when Soraya didn’t, she nodded and looked away, letting Soraya’s hands slip out of hers.
22
Soraya was beginning to become as nocturnal as the divs, sleeping through the day to make the time pass faster. She woke groggy and irritable after having another one of her usual nightmares. But this time, Soraya was the Shahmar, scales spreading down her arms instead of veins, and when she looked up, it was Parvaneh who was watching her transformation with a satisfied gleam in her eye. Parvaneh opened her mouth, and Soraya thought she would laugh, but instead she only said, Are you still with me? before dissolving into a flurry of moths that surrounded her and then fell one by one, dead to the ground, as soon as they touched her.
With a weary groan, Soraya rose from her makeshift bed and tried to run a hand through the tangled mess of her hair. She went to the table, toward the smell of food, but her eyes passed over the dishes laid out for her, distracted by the sight of something more familiar.
Draped over the table was one of her gowns from her wardrobe at Golvahar. It was one of the finest she had, delicate purple silk brocade etched with gold roses. She had never worn it, but she took it up in her hands and breathed in the slightly stuffy scent of her wardrobe as if it were the fragrance of roses from her garden. Home.
On the floor was a pair of matching slippers. Beside the gown was an array of jewelry that also came from her collection, as well as a glass bottle of rose water and a folded note leaning against it.
There will be a banquet in your honor tonight. Ready yourself and I will send someone to accompany you.
She crumpled the note, the sound of it reminding her of crushed wings, and sat down to eat. I won’t dress for him, she told herself as she folded a piece of lavash over quince jam. But it would be nice to have a change of clothes, especially clothes from home, she thought after one bite. And until I find the feather, I still need to play along with his games.
By the time she finished eating, she decided to compromise. She would wear the dress as a welcome change, as well as the slippers since hers were nearly worn, but not the jewelry, which felt too ornamental. After another internal debate, she uncorked the bottle and scented her hair and wrists with rose water. She wore it not to please Azad or anyone else, but because when she closed her eyes and took a breath, she could almost fool herself that she was standing in the golestan. Since she had no sense of time, she kept a nervous eye on the door as she changed out of her old dress and into the gown.
After she finished dressing, she didn’t have to wait long until the door to her room opened unceremoniously, without even the courtesy of a knock. Soraya stood tall, ready to reprimand Azad for being so uncivil, but it wasn’t Azad who had opened her door. It was a div with sharp quills all along his skin. In a flat voice, he said, “The Shahmar sent me to fetch you.”
Soraya followed the div out into the long pathway. Whenever other divs glanced at her with curiosity as they passed by, Soraya huddled closer to the div beside her.
“Here,” the div said at last. They emerged from the tunnels into another enormous cavern, much like Azad’s makeshift throne room. Soraya braced herself, but this time, she didn’t see anything like the div training grounds or the pit from Duzakh. What she saw felt like … home.
Long trestle tables holding plates of food were set out throughout the cavern, and Soraya inhaled the smell of lamb and buttered rice, along with mint and saffron and wine—the kind of meal she would expect at Golvahar. A bonfire burned at the center of the cavern, filling it with light, and rugs were scattered over the ground around it. Azad had promised her a banquet and he had given her one, exactly as she would have imagined it, except that every guest here was a div.
They were seated on the rugs, eating their food, or milling about the banquet tables with goblets of wine in their hands. Soraya recognized those goblets—as well as the tables and plates holding the food—from the palace, and the sight of them enraged her. As soon as she had found her clothes laid out for her, she had known that Azad was trying to give her pieces of home to make her more comfortable here, to confuse her into a sense of belonging. But that was only half of his plan. Because he had brought her a dress that she had never had occasion to wear before. He had issued her an invitation she would never have received. And now she was the guest of honor at a banquet that she would never have attended. This was a version of Golvahar that had never existed, because it was a version of Golvahar where she was allowed to exist. He was trying to tempt her with the promise of a life she had never had.
And Soraya was furious because it was working.
None of the divs reacted to her presence, but now the cavern began to grow quiet and the divs shuffled aside, parting to form an aisle that was heading straight toward her. Even before he appeared in the crowd, Soraya knew who was approaching.
She held his gaze as the Shahmar came toward her, striding down the aisle formed for him with singular purpose. When he was directly in front of her, he held out a hand as if he were still a heroic young prince. She wondered briefly if Sorush had ever greeted Laleh in this way, and she almost laughed, because if this entire banquet was a demonic version of the real thing, then it seemed right that she and Azad should echo Sorush and Laleh’s tender courtship. What a twisted version of them we would make, she thought.
His eyes swept over her dress with a smile, and only then did she notice that the rich purple of her gown matched the color of his robes. She placed her hand in his, and he led her back down the aisle, the divs murmuring as they passed, until they reached a raised platform like a dais cut into the rock at the other end of the cavern.
He guided her up onto the dais and turned her to the crowd, lifting their joined hands. “Here is your champion, divs of Arzur,” he called out, his voice booming through the cavern. “It is because of Soraya that we have taken the palace and dethroned the shah.”
The truth of Azad’s statement sent a chill through her, and she tried to wrench her hand away, but he held it fast. He turned his head toward her, watching her as he again addressed the divs. “Show her your thanks for our victory,” he said, “and let it be known that no div shall ever do her harm. From this moment on, she walks freely through the halls of Arzur, a friend to the divs.”
As one, the divs let out a mighty cheer and raised their goblets to Soraya.
The sounds of adulation were so unfamiliar to her that she wasn’t sure if they were cheering or protesting Azad’s decree. She tried to retrieve her hand again, tried to step backward, away from all those eyes, but Azad kept her in place, and soon the panicked fluttering in her chest began to slow. Now she could acknowledge the meaning of Azad’s decree and see the benefit in it—if she could wander Arzur freely, then she could more easily search the mountain for the feather during the day when Azad was gone. She wouldn’t have to rely on a cloak to hide her—or on Parvaneh, for that matter.
She took a long breath, and as she exhaled, she felt a part of her flowing out into the crowd, and she was no longer afraid. She knew Azad was watching her, waiting for her to react or say something, and so she stubbornly kept her eyes straight ahead, looking at this cavern of monsters who had accepted her more easily than her own people ever had.